If

Watch If… Movie Online « karl808963

As it stands, “If…” isn’t only a grand Malcolm McDowell film, it’s also a gigantic movie about the 60s in both Western society and more specifically Britain in its post-imperial hangover (one of the last British imperial dramas before the Falklands, the conflict in and evacuation of Aden–present-day Yemen–reached completion in 1967, probably while “If…” was filming) . The title itself apparently comes from the distinguished Kipling poem which embodied the highest ideals of imperial Britain. College House, the school attended by Mick Travis–McDowell–and his two friends, is dominated by prefects, or “whips,” seniors who control the student body in the name of the weak-willed headmasters and teachers, who recount the 60s radical understanding of liberal democracy. The coercive actions–cold showers, beatings–administered by the whips to Travis and his fellow rebels prefigure the punishment that would be delivered by the Chicago police, Parisian CRS, and Red Army to student demonstrators and the Czech people in May and August 1968 (in both capitalist and communist regimes the punishments are justified in the name of “society” or “the people”)